Just another music list

Archive for the tag “theuns jordaan”

‘Pampoene!’ Lise Swart yells at the start of the song, just to make sure you know what it’s about and to grab your attention. For those of you who don’t know, ‘pampoene’ are pumpkins and the tradition in rural South Africa is to put pumpkins on the roof to ripen in the sun. Anton Goosen uses this image to create a classic song.

However, there is a huge tongue in Goosen’s cheek (how often isn’t there one?). He is having a go at the ‘poppies’, those fashion conscious girls who walk around in Gucci and Calvin Klein, pretending to be smart city slickers, but back home, they are just farm girls who live in houses with pampoene oppie dak.

The song is done in a hoe-down style and is jam packed with feel good faction. From the bouncy, toe-tapping fiddle to the hilarious lyrics, this song was bound to go down in Afrikaans music folklore. It has been covered by Jakkie Louw and features in a number of medleys (Theuns Jordaan, Beeskraal) and will probably crop up many more times in the future.

Like this:

Drawing group members from Parys, Pretoria, Kempton Park and Bronkhorstspruit, Klopjag is a six piece band that has been around the music scene in South Africa since 2002. Singing in Afrikaans, they didn’t really fit in with the blues movement of Albert Frost, Valiant Swart et al. Neither did they go plough the lighter, pure pop furrow that Steve Hofmeyr and Theuns Jordaan did. Rather they are sort of a cross between REM and Neil Young with Afrikaans lyrics.

‘Stof’ finds them leaning more to the REM side of their influences, but a good smattering of harmonica shows their Neil Young side. The vocals are more traditional sounding than Young’s wail, but you can find an edge of the angst that Young has perfected, in Klopjag.

Like a number of South African songs, the Karoo and travelling through it seems to have been the inspiration. Although this is not a typical ‘driving’ tune, one can certainly imagine it being played as you cruise through that famous desert. It does rather encapsulate the openness and loneliness of the place.